Most Endangered Primates

Here we report the seventh iteration of the biennial listing of a consensus of the 25 primate species considered to be among the most endangered worldwide and the most in need of conservation measures. The 2012 – 2014 list was drawn up during an open meeting held during the XXIV Congress of the International Primatological Society (IPS), Cancun, 14 August 2012. It is a joint effort by the IUCN/SSC Primate Specialist Group, the Intern ational Primatological Society,

The 2012 -2014 list of the world’s 25 most endangered primates has five species from Africa, six from Madagascar, nine from Asia and five from the Neotropics. In terms of individual countries, Mad agascar tops the list with six species. Vietnam has five, Indonesia three, Brazil two, and China,Colombia, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo,

The World’s 25 Most Endangered Primates, and the countries where they are found

Nine primate species were added to the 2012- 2014 list (Table 3). Seven of them were placed on the list of the world’s 25 most endangered primates for the first time. The Tana River red colobus and the Ecuadorian brown – headed spider monkey had already been on previous iterations of the list, but were subsequently removed in favor of other highly three atened species of the same genera. The 2012 – 2014 list now contains two members each of these genera, thus particularly highlighting the severe threats they are facing.

During the discussion of the 20122014 list at the XXIV Congress of IPS in Cancun in 2012 a number of other highly threatened primate species were considered for inclusion (Table 4). For all of these, the situation in the wild is as precarious as it is for those species that finally made it on the list.

“All evidence tells us that the first extinctions among Africa’s primates will occur among the red colobus,” said Thomas Butynski, director of CI’s Eastern Africa Biodiversity Hotspots Program. “Miss Waldron’s red colobus in Ghana and Ivory Coast, and Bouvier’s red colobus in the Republic of Congo may already be extinct, while the Tana River red colobus in Kenya and Bioko red colobus in Equatorial Guinea could be gone within the next 20 years.”

Most non-human hominoids are rare or endangered. The chief threat to most of the endangered species is loss of tropical rainforest habitat, though some populations are further imperiled by hunting for bushmeat.